It really is pretty rare that I will write, comment or otherwise vent online but immediately after considering the thought over I’ve decided to share a couple of of my thoughts with you about what fitness is, what it is actually about and who should really be considered fit. Of course this is only my opinion at this point in history, but it deserves getting described nevertheless. I am writing this, admittedly, out of disappointment. I read fit people’s articles, newsletters and blogs continuously in order to discover and enhance myself in this industry we contact fitness but lately I’ve come across a number of incredibly fit people drawing lines in the sand (with regards to what fitness is), that, in my opinion, never actually require to be there.

Now you have heard me say it a million times! Fitness (technically) is usually defined in a way that has anything to do with getting optimal levels of:

cardiovascular endurance,
muscular endurance,
muscular strength,
flexibility,
body composition (fat vs. lean body mass)
Although this is correct and I certainly agree, I consider what we are speaking about is a quantitative way to appear at a qualitative problem. Yea sports are quantitative. How a great deal, how a lot of, how low, how higher, how robust, how far, how huge, how extended – these are factors we associate fairly normally with sport. In America we tend to be a quantitative society. We want to know how considerably money a particular person has, who has the most friends, who spends the most on garments, who has the lowest body fat percentage, who can bench press the most weight and who can run the longest distance in the least quantity of time. We are obsessed with numbers, quantities and maintaining score.

So I raise the question: Is physical fitness really a quantitative issue? Or could it be that physical fitness is a qualitative issue? Possibly a mixture of both? What do you think?

The only issue I can say about this is that (to me) physical fitness is additional than how a lot of instances you can lift a weight, how far you can run or if you are versatile sufficient to put your feet behind your head or not. To me physical fitness is about items that can not generally be measured with numbers, it really is about much more than a quantity, a weight, a distance, a score.

I inform my consumers that we all have strengths and weaknesses at various points in our lives. At 24 years of age I had 9% body fat year-round, I could squat 700 pounds and bench press 405 pounds for reps. I can’t do that any longer. But I can do 35 pull-ups, stand on a stability ball for just about as lengthy as I want and touch my face to my knee when stretching, all items I could not do as a beast-boy 24-year-old. So was I more match then or now?

Take a appear at the people about you. What is their story? What are their experiences? Are they fat? Are they as well skinny? Perhaps they’re truly weak and cannot lift considerably weight. Maybe they have a low-level of endurance and can’t run very far prior to receiving winded. Consider about it for a moment then ask oneself: if probably their current level is far better than it was previously, does the reality that they don’t live up to your idea of what fitness should be seriously matter? If you think about any of these things they all rely on one particular point: your perception of that particular person. I take the stance that fitness evolves as a individual passes through life. What you thought about fitness early in your life may possibly not be the exact same notion you have about fitness later on. I encourage you to embrace fitness throughout your life no matter what face it presently has.

Increase! Get superior in some way. You may well not normally be in a position to do what you did as a young individual but there are strategies exactly where you can turn into even improved than you have been. And I’ve seen persons who were pretty sedentary as young individuals who have steadily enhanced their physical fitness level as they’ve aged. One particular client of mine, Lisa, told me she’s (in her 60s) in the ideal shape of her adult life. Isn’t that what fitness is about? If you genuinely feel about fitness, isn’t it about receiving improved, improving and performing what you have to have to do to really feel improved about oneself and your physical body? Are not these points mainly about quality and not quantity?

I believe so. I believe fitness has an infinite quantity of faces and requires on an limitless number of traits. I encourage you to try not to see fitness in such a narrow scope that you forget that fitness, above all, is about people today. It’s about men and women obtaining superior, not becoming the finest. www.fitnessmagzine.com is not a sport, it is not a race and no one particular is keeping score. Fitness is about you as an person. You may perhaps be a phenomenally prosperous athlete like Lance Armstrong or Drew Brees (each match persons) or you may possibly be like my client Lisa (also a fit particular person) who in her 60s decided she wanted to stroll with more power, really feel more steady and be in a position to play with her grandchildren.

Now I encourage you to contemplate this: Lisa can honestly say that she is in the most effective shape of her adult life, can Lance Armstrong currently say the exact same factor? So which person’s fitness level serves them ideal? I will let you decide.

Try to consider of fitness as some thing that is inclusive, not exclusive. Sports are excellent and in order to have a winner we have to hold score and compare a single against the other. I encourage you to leave the score keeping to the athletes on the field-of-play, and only on the field-of-play, and not in the day-to-day activities that men and women lead in their pursuit of fitness.